Heating Wort

[charlie]

I brew in an unheated garage and when I ferment I only heat the primary, my reasoning being;

Primary fermentation needs to be at the correct temperature.

Secondary is really only for conditioning, if it was a stuck fermentation I would be fiddling about with the primary and what's the point in squeezing out the last odd gravity point. However I do insulate secondary fv to try to keep the temperature as even as possible.

Priming in keg. I have never had a problem getting a keg to pressurise. I have 3 kegs and drink pretty much in sequence so the yeast has 6-8 weeks to pressurise the keg and it always has but King Keg lids are a PITA to get them to hold pressure.

Opinions and reasoning gratefully received.

[maxashton]

Neither!
I rely entirely on controlling ambient temperature. My kitchen is generally at about 10 degrees, but its easy to crank up the heat on the radiator if i need to.

[tubby_shaw]

I use an immersion heater heaterstat in the primary at 18º C as I brew in an unheated garage.
The secondary fermenter gets a brew belt around it in the cold weather simply to keep the yeast ticking over.
Kegs get force carbed and barrels are brought into the house for a week for priming.

[johnmac]

I ferment in a fridge at 20 deg.

[bitter_dave]

I do the primary fermetation in my office at home, which seems to maintain a temperature of about 20 - 21 C (being a work-shy-fop I'm at home all the time and can therefore keep an eye on the temperature; if it goes much above 21 I use my sophisticated temerature adjustment mechanism*) Once barreled I keep it in the office for a week to carbonate. What a fascinating life I have





* I open the window for a bit.

[Immy's Dad]

I brew under the stairs in what was once a pantry. As it is quite cold at this time of year (no sh1t sherlock ) I have been using an immersion heater in the primary but really am stuck as to what to use when it's kegged.

SWMBO does not allow beer/brewing objects in any other part of the house. It's quite strange that this topic came up as I was wondering what my options are. perhaps a heating mat? The doris had one for her vivarium with the tortoise, would something like that do?

[Scooby]

Neither!
I rely entirely on controlling ambient temperature. My kitchen is generally at about 10 degrees, but its easy to crank up the heat on the radiator if i need to.

My thermostat is also set at 10 degrees so I use an immersion heater for the beer and single malts for internal heating when I'm cooking I open the windows and back door to keep the temp down. My wife takes a different course of action, when the temp drops below 20c she hibernates

[SteveD]

I did rely on ambient for both but ambient in this house has become something along the lines of Vesuvius in mid erupt. Three girlies here of assorted ages; wife v2.0, daughter v1.0, and daughter v2.0, are all coldophobic and so ambient can be 23c! No matter how forcefully I protest on behalf of my yeasties it makes no difference so now I stand the FV in my boiler (70L), fill the boiler with cold water, and practice 'attemperation' by replacing part of the jacket water often enough to maintain something between 17-20c in the FV. I only secondary if it's taking too long to ferment down, and sticking that in a (relatively) coolish corner seems to work for some reason.

[SteveD]

wife v2.0, daughter v1.0, and daughter v2.0, are all coldophobic and so ambient can be 23c! No matter how forcefully I protest

do what a rather thrifty mate of mine did when he had a lodger, frig the thermostat so that when the dial is showing 20 deg c it is actually set to control to 15 deg c

Like it. Trouble is, their sensory and cognitive circuits are so heat driven that they will just register 'cold' and turn it up some more, without actually looking at what's written on the dial.

Wife v2.0 is an improved version of the original v1.0 wife software which was far too buggy and suffered irrational crashes and general incompatability. Not only that, once installed over girlfriend v8.3 certain other programs suddenly stopped working, like money-in-pocket v3, night-out-with-the-lads v2, fishing v1, golf v6.2 and sex v9. Funnily enough, brewing v1 seemed to work better than it does now, but in all other respects the v2 version of wife is much better - except for the heating issue.

[NzDan1]

This time of the year I have four primarys on the go, and they sit between 16-20oC day and night with no intervention in my outside brew room, last winter was more work, one heatpad, so there was alot of changing fermentors around to keep them at a good temp!